Him and Her
by Artemisa-arcanum
Summary: Musings over a redheaded girl. My stand against all the sappy poor little Ginny stories. Even the ones that don't start like that. Before HBP but not really AU.


**Subject:**Him and Her

Summary - Musings over a red-headed girl. My stand against all the sappy poor-little-Ginny stories. Even the ones that don't start like that.

Disclaimer - I truly wish I owned HP and his world. But it still belongs to J.K. Rowlings and to the nice people at Warner. I kneel before her creativity and borrow a bit of it for my pleasure.

A/N - Written in first person monologue for some weird reason. It just seemed to work a bit better like that.

ooooo

**Him and Her**

How could anyone not notice her?

I know what they said. Poor Ginny. All lovesick and lovelorn for her beloved hero. Unrequited adoration. Everyone is glad she gave up on her hope. Glad to see her move on. Maybe pick someone more worthy this time around. Not like that fool of a _Boy-Who-Lived_ who never took notice of her. Poor Ginny. Blind Harry.

I remember the way she shut up in front of _him_. Her whole manner changed. She became someone else. Someone too shy to say a word. I could see her talking with her friends or her brothers, but as soon as _he_ was noticed, she'd change. No more laugher, only painful and embarrassing sideways looks. No shining golden-brown eyes sparkling with mischief as I knew they could be.

_Him_. Always _him_. Like a specter haunting her. Haunting me. Always in the way. Never letting her see me. Myrtle I can handle, the _Boy-With-The-Famous-Scar_ is too much.

After all what did she really know about _him_? What she read in the books and papers. The stories she heard as a baby. The few comments she actually heard her brother say in his letters and during the summer months. But did she really get to know _him_? Not really. Always the larger than life image of _him_. The hero. The knight. The orphan. The story. The friend of her brother.

Every time I caught her eye was a challenge. Every real smile my reward. I knew what she was really like. What she was to embarrassed to let _him_ see. That she really was as forceful and as alive as the rest of the family. Honestly, can you picture a quiet and introverted Weasley? They'd get lost in the shuffle. Even Percy, who is the most reserved of the lot, would never let himself fade into the background like she did when she was around _him_.

I hated _him_. I hated _him_ for interfering in what could have been. She would never see me until she could take her eyes off _him_.

So I gave up. I gave up on her. I gave up because I could not compete with _him_. With the _Boy-Who-Lived_. The _great_ Harry Potter.

I remember the first time I saw her in platform 9 3/4. Saying goodbye to her brothers. So excited for them. So sad because she would miss them. I remember how she chased the train with laughter and tears in her eyes. Wouldn't you remember something like that?

A year passed and she came to Hogwarts. And I tried. I really tried to make her see me. But there was always _him_. Maybe if she had not been so embarrassed of _him_ she might have told me about the dairy. Before she was forced down to the chamber. So we went after her and I ended up alone in the chamber with her and Riddle.

I saved her. Somehow I did. Scared and frightened as I was. But she still only saw _him_. The Boy-Who-Lived had come after her and her hero worship just increased. Made me larger than who I really was. Always the hero. Never the real me.

The Triwizard tournament just made it worse. All those tearjerker articles Rita Skeeter did. All the tasks. I have to admit from the outside, the results looked a lot more impressive than from my point of view. If I had watched someone fly circles around a dragon, I'd be impressed. The lake was a fluke and the maze... The maze was a sham. Crouch cleared my way through it. I did manage to survive another meeting with Voldemort, be it by luck, chance or fate.

Really nothing much I actually did. I mostly reacted. But the image just got stronger than the reality. Overshadowing me.

How can you fight that? How can you compete with yourself? I wanted her to know me. The real me. The one who grew up in a cupboard and loves to fly. Who still knows very little about the wizarding world, having known next to nothing about it for so long. The one who gets scared. The one who laughs at her brothers' jokes and antics. The one that makes mistakes.

I'm not a hero. Never was. I'm Harry Potter, son of James and Lily. I'm someone whose mother died for. I'm Ron and Hermione's friend. Granted, I'm also the target for a psychotic wizard, but nobody's perfect.

Everybody felt sorry for her and nobody cared what I thought or felt about it. Who cares about the object of a crush? It's the sorry little girl that catches everyone's attention. Not the confused kid who can't understand why she never really saw the _real_ him. Who wanted to know the real her. She never gave me a chance. She only saw her made up version of me.

I waited almost four years before she really talked to me. When she did, it was to find out she was dating someone else already.

So I gave up waiting for her, like she gave up on _him_. She won't ever give me a chance, because to her, I will always be the crush that never cared back for her. Even today, she can't separate the real from the imagined.

I watch her as she plays Quidditch or talks with her friends. She's a good friend. A great listener. But she will never be what could have been if not for her refusal to see what was in front of her. Instead of what she saw in her mind's eye.

They accuse me of being blind, but I know the truth. She was the blind one. Blinded by a fairy story that never was.

_hprockshprockshprocks_

More notes -

I got fed up with all the poor-pathetic-Ginny stories out there. She's all wonderful and just waiting for clueless Harry to notice her at some point. Selfless and pure love. Give me a break. The cannon characters are too real for that to happen. She _has_ to have some faults. Maybe being blinded by the name and the stories is hers.

Then I re-read all the books and realized that in cannon, Harry notices Ginny all of the time but can't really talk to her because she won't do it. He's always aware of her and tries to get her into the conversation. Meets her eyes and laugh at private jokes. Then in OotP it really explodes. Now _that_ is a relationship worth pursuing. Maybe now that she has the blinders off, she can really make a connection with Harry.

Agree or disagree? Let me know. The more reviews the more stories I'll post. Sorry if that sounded like a threat ;-).

Yours in HP fandom,

Artemisa27


End file.
